Selected podcast episodes on psychology, economics, science, history and culture

Category: Science

On Being with Krista Tippett | 22 August 2019 | 0h 51m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Katy Payne, who discovered that humpback whales compose ever-changing songs and that elephants communicate across long distances by infrasound. Draws on ideas from her book Silent Thunder: In the Presence of Elephants.

Rationally Speaking | 20 August 2019 | 0h 51m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Razib Khan about his blog post Stuff I Was Wrong About. Covers human evolution, economics, religion, evolutionary psychology, and optimism about human progress. Also discusses lessons from the replication crisis about how not to be taken in by studies that do not replicate.

Steve Forbes: What’s Ahead | 11 August 2019 | 0h 30m | Listen Later | iTunes
Interview with Matt Ridley, summarising key ideas from The Rational Optimist. Argues that despite today’s constant influx of negative news, life is getting better at an accelerating rate. Ridley challenges popularly held beliefs about the current state of the world, citing that extreme poverty has been defeated, food production is more efficient than ever, humans are living longer, and warfare is actually on the decline. If there’s one thing the defiantly optimistic Ridley worries about, it’s too much bureaucracy which he sees as an attempt to curb trade and stifle innovation.

Late Night Live – with Phillip Adams ABC RN | 17 July 2019 | 0h 24m | Listen Later
Interview with Robyn Arianrhod about her book Thomas Harriot: A Life in Science, which resurrects Thomas Harriot’s reputation and acknowledges his place in the canon of scientific luminaries.

Context with Brad Harris | 5 August 2019 | 0h 35m | Listen Later | iTunes
What happens when rich and powerful societies lose their wisdom and forget what made them great in the first place? Backgrounds the rediscovery after thousands of years of Lucretius’s modern sounding On the Nature of Things. (As told in Stephen Greenblatt’s book The Swerve: How the World Became Modern.) Draws lessons for today from how a paradise of wisdom was once lost.